Data Justice seeks to expand the coalition of organizations, academic scholars and other advocates working to promote greater economic justice in the use of data in society. A number of organizations and individuals have contributed ideas, strategy, resources and ongoing advice to Data Justice as part of our Advisory Council and we intend for this group to grow over time. Materials on the Data Justice site, however, reflect those of the Data Justice organization or individual authors and not necessarily the views of each Council Member, who do not govern or sign off on website contents. Advisory Council members include:

Nathan Newman is Director of Data Justice and has been an advocate for and writing about improving public policy for over twenty years. From 1997-1999, Newman was Program Director at NetAction, a consumer watchdog group, where he was an early advocate for antitrust scrutiny of Microsoft. More recently, as Policy Director and then Executive Director of Progressive States Network from 2005-2010, he oversaw the creation of a Broadband Buildout and Technology Investments policy program to promote state policy around fighting the digital divide in broadband access. He was a Research Fellow at New York University's Information Law Institute from 2012-2014 where he wrote multiple law reviews and popular articles around the potential role of big data platforms such as Google in driving monopoly concentration and economic inequality in the new economy. His Ph.D. on Internet public policy and its relationship to local economic development was turned into a book, Net Loss: Internet Prophets, Private Profits and the Costs to Community, which the Harvard Business Review described as a “provocative case for business civic-mindedness” in the context of the information economy. Newman has a Ph.D. in Sociology from UC-Berkeley and a J.D. from Yale Law School.

Gene Kimmelman is CEO and President of Public Knowledge. Gene served as Director of the Internet Freedom and Human Rights project at the New America Foundation, and as Chief Counsel for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division. Earlier, Gene served as Vice President for Federal and International Affairs at Consumers Union, Chief Counsel and Staff Director for the Antitrust Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee and Legislative Director for the Consumer Federation of America. Gene began his career as a consumer advocate and Staff Attorney for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch.

Cathy O’Neil founded the Lede Program in Data Journalism at Columbia University and runs the mathbabe.org website. She earned a Ph.D. in math from Harvard, was a postdoc at the MIT math department, and was a professor at Barnard College where she published a number of research papers in arithmetic algebraic geometry. She then chucked it and switched over to the private sector where she worked as a quantitative analyst for the hedge fund D.E. Shaw in the middle of the credit crisis, and then for RiskMetrics, a risk software company that assesses risk for the holdings of hedge funds and banks. She left finance and started a the mathbabe.org site, joined Occupy Wall Street, and started the Lede Program. She is currently writing a book about the dark side of big data.

Frank Pasquale is a Professor at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law. His research addresses the challenges posed to information law by rapidly changing technology, particularly in the health care, internet, and finance industries. He frequently presents on the ethical, legal, and social implications of information technology for attorneys, physicians, and other health professionals. His book The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms that Control Money and Information (Harvard University Press, 2015) develops a social theory of reputation, search, and finance.

Anders Scheiderman is Co-Founder of Data Chefs, a coalition to make data science more diverse and accessible to the community , as well as Database Services Manager for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). Previously, he was Information Manager at Working America, Online Campaign Manager at the Services Employees International Union and Chief Technology Officer at the National Journal Group. He has worked as a consultant for Hewlett-Packard, Nextel and other corporations in the technology field. He has a Ph.D. in Sociology from UC-Berkeley.

Data Justice received initial funding from the Media Democracy Fund, which in turn is funded by foundations, individuals and companies to support MDF's mission to "award grants that promote and protect the public’s rights in the digital age."